Whicker: Baseball’s day of dislocation is right around the corner

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Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, left, and pitcher Rich Hill are both familiar with the tension of the annual MLB non-waiver trade deadline, and the effect it can have on players and their families. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images)

SAN DIEGO — No one ever had to remind Dave Roberts to count blessings.

The Dodgers were pretty good in 2004, he was pretty good for them, and he and they were playing a series in his hometown of San Diego when July 31 came around. There was nothing wrong with this picture.

“My wife was seven months pregnant,” Roberts said Thursday. “There were rumors that I might get traded, but then 2 o’clock came and went and I thought I was OK.”

Roberts gave the Red Sox the most famous stolen base in club history in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series a few months later. Boston came back from a 3-0 deficit, won the series, then won its first World Series since 1918.

Stanley never got past Triple-A and played in two independent leagues and in Italy.

“I was bummed,” Roberts said.

He smiled.

“But I somehow missed the flight to Boston the next day,” he said. “My wife and I went out and had a nice dinner. We got an extra day out of it. And it all worked out fine.”

The deadline is circled, squared and sometimes cursed on a ballplayer’s calendar. It is the storm cloud that lives behind the All-Star break. It was bad enough before the internet came along, with its torrential rumors and the imaginary trades that aren’t actually happening but “make sense.” Now it is inescapable, even for the unplugged.

Winning teams are looking for adrenalin shots. They want the rental player on a bad team, the final piece, the guy who can make October sing.

The Cubs sent premium youth, including Gleyber Torres, to the Yankees in 2016 to get closer Aroldis Chapman for two months. Then Chapman re-signed with the Yankees in the offseason. The Cubs won the World Series, so it worked out.

In 2012 the Angels borrowed Zack Greinke from Milwaukee for two months. Their package to the Brewers included Jean Segura, now a batting-champion contender in Seattle. The Angels didn’t get to the playoffs, so it didn’t work out.

In 2016 the Dodgers got Rich Hill and Josh Reddick from Oakland for three prospects, including current A’s starting pitcher Frankie Montas. Hill pitched well, signed with the Dodgers for $48 million over three years, and pitched in last year’s World Series. It wasn’t that hard to change clubhouses, and the rotisserie world didn’t blink an eye. It is only complicated if you’re the one living through it, and your heartbeat picks up speed whenever you turn on the phone.

“There’s always tension,” Hill said. “Packing up your family and moving is something nobody wants to do. It was better for me because I was going from a team that wasn’t winning to a team that had a chance.

“Nobody knows or cares about it, but you have a lot of things to take care of. We moved everything into a storage unit, we had to get a new place to live. If you haven’t been through it before, it’s tough, especially in the middle of the season.”

Hill was 36 at the time. Involuntary dislocation was nothing new. The Dodgers were his ninth major league move, involving eight teams (Boston twice). But this was more sudden and urgent.

“It was easier because I came with a teammate,” Hill said. “We could face everything together. Where will I live? How do I get to the park? What’s the training staff like? Who are the coaches? Where’s the weight room?

“Fortunately, Clayton (Kershaw) helped make it easy. It’s good when a guy who is the best in the game is open to telling you about the organization.”

The Dodgers got Hill in 2016, Yu Darvish last year. They didn’t need to give up major league personnel. If they do something this year they’ll probably get a setup reliever, again as painlessly as possible.

Manny Machado’s name looms above all. The Baltimore slugger is an impending free agent on a horrible team, He is supposed to be headed to the Dodgers or maybe the Diamondbacks, unless it’s the Phillies or the Brewers, but then don’t forget the Yankees. When he gets the call, or when his name starts traveling slowly across the “crawl,” baseball’s accumulated blood pressure will drop significantly.